


Flight of Fancy

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Airplanes, Airports, Alternate Universe, Cheesy, Cutesy, Eventual Smut, M/M, Photography, Probably a lot of fucking airplane puns, Rating May Change, Romantic Comedy, it's cute but, probably will, romantic, this is one for your sweet tooth boys and girls and genderless balls of rage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7141907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is a wedding photographer pretty much disenchanted with romance altogether and Phil is a romantic-type flight attendant who's seen You've Got Mail more times than he's physically mailed a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flight of Fancy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cockwhoredan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockwhoredan/gifts).



> this is so cheesy but "it's supposed to be cheesy"  
> thanks to lexi for looking it over and then blowing smoke up my ass about it but also for being the love of my life

 

Amid the dull roar of the countless people droning on within hearing distance, all of Dan's attention is riveted to the strap of his carry-on. The fabric is digging irritatingly into his shoulder and his leg has definitely cramped up from the way he's standing, but he could be on fire and still would absolutely refuse to move. In lieu of finding a more comfortable spot, he's actively but unsuccessfully staring down an older business-type man. The idea is that his glare is forceful enough that the cushy arm chair will free up without him saying a word; whether that means the man simply gets up or he spontaneously combusts, never to be heard of again, Dan isn't too concerned. This whole ordeal has been testing his willpower since about twenty minutes ago, when the aggressively cordial lady over the speaker announced that the flight to Dallas had moved to gate C12. Dan had watched carefully as the man and his wrinkled suit heaved a dramatic sigh. One nosy glance at the man's ticket and Dan had realized that, sooner or later, the blinking seat would be unoccupied.

Of course, it wouldn't be any time soon. Dan's flown enough that it's irrevocably and permanently stamped into his mind that Midway has shitty seating and, even more of a crime against humanity in his opinion, shitty outlet availability. The airport in Denver, his home away from home, has been positively saturated by charging stations in the past few years. Here in Chicago, though? There's a possible likelihood that his phone could actually die. Dan believes that if you die in a dream, you die in real life; he thinks the same is true of phones. It's bad enough he has to go offline to get on the plane in the first place. He'd take the risk that his phone crashes the engine or something if he wasn't afraid to get kicked off the flight.

There's nothing wrong with the man in his seat, of course. He's probably a perfectly lovely father and husband who's making enough money to send his children to prep school and pay for their braces without ever making them feel guilty for costing him the price of both. That's the mental tangent Dan  _ would _ go off on- had this man not so deeply and irreconcilably wronged him. In Dan's head now, his name is John McCryer and he cheats on his wife with his secretary in addition to not moving toward his bloody gate when the change was announced. Dan's in the middle of mourning the crooked teeth and uneducated minds the McCryer children surely must have (since John is very clearly a malevolent, dastardly figure) when the man stands up, unplugs his laptop, and heads off toward the food, gift shops, and bathrooms.

The amount of time Dan had stared just to get this seat is frankly embarrassing, so his concept of shame is all but nonexistent when another person or two also being toward the seat and he moves more quickly than he has since secondary school to make certain that arm chair is his.

Dan isn't usually like this, except that he's getting off work and flying home after a weekend of exhaustion. Which is a pretty regular thing. So, he is technically  _ somewhat  _ like this a good portion of the time. The only excuse  he has right now is how unfathomably tired he is, sinking into the chair and plugging in his phone like it's the most important thing he's ever done. He's just shot three weddings in one weekend and if he ever agrees to that again, he thinks someone should check up on whether he really can make his own decisions anymore.

The rest of the wait for the plane drags on forever. By some unfortunate miracle and probably a rip in the space-time continuum, he's somewhat early to this flight. Dan learned pretty quickly in his career that, as much as his body wills him to be late, he can't really afford to miss flights. Usually this means he cuts it too close instead, a virtually unbroken string of luck the only thing keeping him from getting the gates closed on him. Now, though, he's so tired that he thinks his under-eye bags might be heavier than those huge ones the cheap families are still hauling around with wheels and while trying to pretend they're carry-ons. (If you can't carry it on, it's not a blinking carry-on.) The tossing and turning of last night's cheap hotel bed means the sleeping in until noon he'd accounted for in his schedule isn't causing him to arrive five to twenty minutes before the plane takes off when boarding starts half an hour before. He passes out in the seat with his phone clutched tightly in his fist and his head lolled back against the padded backrest.

☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁

Dan settles into a seat about three rows back from the front of the plane an hour or two later. He hadn't woken up until a kid started shrieking in his ear, luckily about seven or so minutes before boarding began. Despite the fact he's groggy and disoriented from sleep, he'd really been hoping being here this early was early enough to claim the elusive front row seats. He's too fucking tall for these economy Southwest seats, but he spends too much on clothes to fly any other airline and he has too much of a natural propensity to lateness to get the row with enough room for this vast expanse of limbs he has to deal with. 

Still, getting here this early has its perks. Dan actually gets to pick the aisle seat for once, instead of needing to slide his arse past an old couple so he can feel claustrophobic against the window, and then pushing past them again every time he needs to go to the bathroom. And speaking of the bathroom, he's actually pretty close to it. He complains about a lot; his internal monologue is basically one long loop of whiny nitpicking. It didn't really seem like a problem until he picked up one of those self empowerment books on the flight here- those ones that tell you to do things like Eat, Pray, Love and to "dance like nobody's watching." The attention grabbing font and coloring, as predictable as it made him, had naturally grabbed his attention among copies of the kinds of books he would find in Target. 

"Dwell on the yeses instead of the noes." He knew then that it was cheesy, and he spent an inordinate amount of time pondering whether he had ever encountered the plurals of yes and no before that very moment, but it reenters his head now that his mind is subconsciously following the guidelines of a self-help book. He's on a plane. It probably won't crash. That's more than enough to be grateful for, isn't it?

A yawn interrupts his train of thought. Being this positive is exhausting for someone who contemplates death on an unhealthily regular basis; obviously it has nothing to do with how little he's slept in the last 72 hours. He fiddles with his phone, uncoiling headphones from his pocket as other people slide into the seats next to him. Note to self: other people's crotches in your face as they try to shimmy past you to the window seat is actually  _ worse _ than aiming yours toward them. Still, once they sit down, Dan is relieved to find out the couple are also reaching for their own headphones, meaning no one is going to try to talk to him. He's not quite sure why some people think flying is the perfect time to get acquainted with a stranger. Dan's favorite time to meet new people is never. 

He gets distracted by Twitter for long enough that they're preparing for take off by the next time he looks up. Generally, he tends not to listen to the safety precautions. When you fly at least once a year, paying attention to "how to slip down a giant inflatable bouncy slide" and whatever joke material that particular attendant feels like trying out on you today becomes a little repetitive. Now that his headphones aren't in for once, he can hear the instructions for the first time in a while. He isn't itching to take his computer out from under the seat in front of him either, because he didn't bother uploading anything from his camera to his laptop last night. So much for getting a head start on editing. At least he'll get to enjoy his peanuts without worrying about whether it's his poor lighting or the bride's dress really was off-white. He can never remember off the top of his head. Weddings are just a white blur when you go to as many as he does. 

"Ladies and gentlemen" rumbles softly through the stagnant but sterile airplane air and Dan's brow instantly furrows in concentration. "If we could have your attention towards the front of the cabin for just a few moments, we'd like to point out the safety features onboard our Boeing 737-700 series aircraft."

That's when he looks up. The voice is about as welcoming as he thinks a voice can be without containing any of that disingenuous tone that flight attendants tend to use, and it's both deep and lighter than the air it's dispersing through simultaneously. Dan can't even pretend it isn't the loveliest sound he's heard all day, but it isn't the eager timbre that narrowed his focus so violently; it's the British accent that jolts a pang of homesickness right to his gut. 

"To fasten your seatbelt, insert the flat metal end into the buckle." Dan starts laughing softly to himself, knowing that if the people next to him weren't wearing headphones, they'd think there's something wrong with him. Not only is this man definitely British, but he's  _ Northern _ to top it off. He sounds ever-so-slightly drunk, the mark of a true Northerner, and Dan is brought back to instincts of making jokes about people from Wales fucking sheep. What precious memories he has of being a teenager. 

All childhood prejudices aside, Dan tries to find the owner of the voice. He's only a few rows back from where the attendants in the front stand, so it should be easy, but whoever it is talks into the phone a little further back from view so the whole plane can hear. Instead, there's a woman with shiny, silvery hair bouncing in front of him, showing Dan how to buckle a seatbelt as if he's never done it before. Granted, she's pretty and he's a little obsessed in those few seconds with the aesthetic of her hair juxtaposed with that navy uniform, but she's got that same feigned enthusiasm that makes the man on the speaker's genuine excitement so notable. She seems to be on the taller end, but the man is much taller- Dan  _ should _ be able to see him. For the first time in his life, he regrets that he's sitting instead of standing since this lower angle only lets him see a black fringe over the top of sterling locks.

They're already to directions for "the highly unlikely event of a water evacuation" by the time Dan is done pushing on the armrests of his chair to gain a few inches and catch a glimpse. He knows they're coming around to check his seat belt soon, and he doesn't want the attendant with silver hair think he's doing anything more suspicious than having an instant and illogical infatuation with her coworker. Dan sees romantic gestures constantly and very few of them have an affect on him. He sees people cry out of pure love on a regular basis, sees them at their most beautiful. And yet, he cares so much more about the aesthetic of the lighting than the love shared by the couple that it's a wonder he stays employed in such a subjective, people- and romance-oriented business. He doesn't get all the worked up by things that leave most people emotionally raw. There's just something about hearing an accent that reminds him of home that unwillingly wrenches these feelings from him, like the end of  _ Marley and Me _ . 

The fucking dog dies at the end. What kind of horrendous joke is that?

The girl is flipping her shimmery hair down the aisle by the time Dan is paying attention again. "Could you please fasten your seat belt, sir?" Damn it. He's been so preoccupied that he didn't even remember the one he has to do. 

"Course," he mutters quietly, searching for the left and right sides of the belt to click them together, though he fumbles a bit from the unnecessary embarrassment of not having followed directions. It's not like she's going to invoke Sky Law™ and kick him out for making her pause half a second. 

"Thank you!" she throws back chipperly, and she's almost painfully American to Dan. Don't get him wrong, he doesn't have a problem with America or anything. This is his home now, and it definitely has more people who care about him than the UK does. He wonders if you can feel homesick for a place you don't quite consider to be your home anymore while the man summarizes that it is, in fact, illegal to smoke on the aircraft. It takes Dan a moment or two to notice, after all that stretching and overall creepiness he expended to see the guy's face, that he's staring right at him.

The first thing Dan notices is how he looks like an absolute dork. 

His smile is so sunny as he speaks that Dan can hardly stop the corners of his mouth from twitching up to reciprocate. He's wearing a short sleeved button up, a red tie, and a sweater vest. It's all honestly quite adorable until Dan remembers that, in this guy's head, a vest probably reminds him of a tank-top first instead of a waist coat too, and he feels that strong home connection once more. Speaking of similarities, it's 2016- Dan had been almost certain he was the only man left on Earth with a fringe, but now he's affronted with the fact that this man has an admittedly even better one. The eyes that flit around the plane as he gestures animatedly with his free hand are bright and clear, and Dan can see how blue they are even from this far away. Beneath his light grey trousers, he's wearing a pair of high topped white sneakers. The tongues of the shoes have slid to the side enough that Dan's pretty sure he might be wearing two different color socks. 

Oi. Give Dan's heart a break.

"Continue wearing the mask until otherwise instructed by a uniformed crew member," the man finishes, somehow not yet tired of this script he has undoubtedly said hundreds of times in his life since it seems like he knows what he's doing, and, much to Dan's dismay, the girl with the hair is in his way. 

"Like I said, I'm Phil, and onboard we have Cat and Tyler if you need anything, in case you missed that the first time."

How had Dan missed that the first time? He really needs to learn to not get lost in his own head so often. 

☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁

"Can I get you something to drink, sir?"

Dan had been skimming through his playlists, looking for something to listen to when, lo and behold, British Phil the flight attendant (quite the title) appears right in front of him. The couple in the other two seats are already asleep, have been since takeoff, and Dan feels a little bit... sweaty, now that Phil is looking directly at him. 

"Just a tea, please," he gets out finally, more than aware that his voice is much more stable than he feels. 

Phil's face lights up even more intensely, which Dan didn't think was possible. Someone that happy could look more happy? He's starting to feel a little self-conscious about his resting bitch face. "Run that by me one more time?"

"A tea. Hold the crumpets?" He already can't hold back the sarcasm. Where's the self help book when he needs it?

"You're British, aren't you?" Phil chatters, the grin on his face almost accusatory, like Dan had been keeping a secret from him when he didn't stand up and announce his birthplace the second he heard Phil's accent. 

"What, just because I want tea? If I were, I'd probably want the crumpets," Dan deadpans, pulling the earbuds from his ears and fidgeting with them as he looks up at Phil. He knows his leg is restlessly bouncing, too. He can never sit still, but this situation is definitely exacerbating the tendency. 

Phil lets out a bark of laughter before shaking his head. He leans against the side of the seat in front of Dan and tucks the order-taking pen behind his ear. "Well if the accent hadn't given it away, the tea was a good hint. It's a morning in June. Not like anyone else on this flight is ordering tea." He leans in toward Dan to stage whisper something, oblivious to the way Dan's heart hammers more forcibly against his rib cage. "It isn't very good, if I'm being honest."

"I'm not British. I'm just making fun of you."

Phil's face falls for a moment and he leans back a little. "Are you really?" he asks, somewhat more withdrawn like he's a puppy Dan whacked on the nose with a newspaper. 

"Of course not," Dan snorts, unable to conceal the smallest bit of a grin. "If I was making fun of you, I'd sound a lot more Northern."

This bit earns him a scowl but the laugh behind it tells Dan he's saved it from the look of hurt he'd gotten a moment before. "I come to America and I still get teased for that, hm? How's that seem fair at all?" Phil pouts, putting a wrist on his hip with the notepad of drink orders still in hand. 

"I would love to have some tea. That'd be aces," Dan amends innocently. It's a vastly exaggerated attempt, the As of his words pulled long and almost American, and not even a good one, but Phil giggles anyway. Christ on a bike. Dan could listen to that giggle forever. Why are his palms all slippery on his phone?

"I'd go with my American accent, but it's still pretty awful," Phil admits shyly, a few strands of fringe falling from where they were. "I learned it all from Buffy and now I think it's too late for me to get it right."

Buffy. This fucking guy. "It was really nice to hear, actually," Dan assures. "Even Northern. I've felt homesick for the UK literally only a handful of times since I started college here. So it's quite the feat to make me feel that, let me tell you."

"You poor thing," Phil clucks gently, like some kind of mother hen in his dorky sweater vest. "Do you live in Chicago? The weather is different, but sometimes it's almost as cloudy there as it was in Lancashire."

"You're from Lanc-"

Dan is cut off almost immediately by the girl with the silver hair- Cat, he remembers a second or two later. 

"Philip!" she hisses almost inaudibly to get his attention from about two rows behind where Dan is sitting.

"Yes, my beautiful sky queen?" Phil throws back happily, turning his head from Dan to look in her general direction. She gives him a look that he takes a second to register as words. "Oh. I've not even done three rows."

"Bingo," she laughs, and Dan is instantly dismayed that Phil's going to have to walk away and do his job or something. "Less flirt, more work."

Phil goes slightly pink and Dan's dreaded hyena laugh makes an appearance for much longer than he'd care to acknowledge. "So, tea?" Phil reiterates, looking for his pen in his pockets and getting more frantic. 

"Behind your ear, mate," Dan reminds him, only to be met with another faintly embarrassed blush. "And switch that to a coffee. I'm horrendously tired."

"Coffee," Phil repeats, writing it down once the pen is in hand. 

"And I'm Dan."

"Coffee for Dan," he says with that unbelievable and unfair smile cropping up again so quickly that Dan lets out another nervous laugh. 

"Thanks."

"I'll be back," Phil promises solemnly, nearly tripping over his shoelace as he makes it to the row behind Dan's.

"Good luck, Phil."

☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁

Dan doesn't get to see Phil again until he's handing out peanuts (Cat brought him the coffee). Frankly, he doesn't know what to do on this flight. He refuses to put in headphones in case he falls asleep and misses whatever chance Phil has to talk, so all he really can do is sit anxiously and wonder what kind of person he's become just on this one flight to put off listening to Kanye for some guy. A cute guy, but... Kanye. 

"Here'syourpeanutswhereareyoufrom?" It's all gusted out in one light breath, and Dan can tell that Phil is trying hard to actually keep the conversation alive while doing his job. Dan finally translates the gibberish well enough to answer. "Wokingham."

Phil skitters away with his cart of peanuts, and Dan's grinning to himself. Even the way Phil walks away is sort of endearing, and Dan thinks he can feel his heart doing that thing hearts are supposed to do. Since his friends started getting married, Dan's been hearing lecture upon lecture about how he's going to feel when he finally meets someone. 

"Feels like walking around an... unsavory fair," Connor tried to explain to him once. "The people who work there are scary, you know the funnel cakes have got to give you food poisoning, and every ride looks like your parents are going to have sue someone eventually if you get on one. All of the games are rigged and everyone knows it. But then you go one summer, and you find this... really rickety roller coaster."

"Nice alliteration," Dan remembers he interrupted with.

"Hush. I'm being profound," Connor shot back. "You see the rickety roller coaster and like... despite everything you know about the things you find at the fair, you get on it. You're so nervous that you might just throw up, but you're also really excited. It like, thrums in your finger tips. You know it might break down. You just cross your fingers it doesn't."

"That's a fucking pretentious metaphor, Connor. No wonder we go to art school."

Dan thinks that's a load of bullshit, especially after what happened with Connor. He sees the fighting at weddings for his job, and that's supposedly the peak of the relationship. That's supposed to be the best day of their lives. If you fight on the best day of your life as a couple, Dan isn't all that heartbroken he hasn't been in a relationship since college. 

What does break his heart is the idea that, whatever inexplicable flutter he feels in his chest, Dan knows he probably won't see the reason for this stupid flutter again. He's been sitting here so long thinking about God knows what while Phil had never made his way back to Dan's row of seats. It's such an intense feeling to pass a stranger and think... think that Phil's just  _ supposed _ to be in his life. It almost hurts him to use fate-oriented words like that. More pretentious art school ideas. He hung out with too many MFAs. 

When he goes to open his peanuts and drown his sorrows in the free legumes, Dan realizes they've got seven digits and a smiley face written on them in Sharpie. 

 


End file.
